Dig Deep

Harnessing our innermost feelings

I once had the interesting experience of working with an actor in a charity project I was involved in. Rob O’Shea has been in Casualty, Rock n Rolla and The Real Hustle, as well as a number of stage plays and outdoor performances. He is also a really nice person and surprisingly humble given his talents. But what really impressed me about him was his ability to make himself cry! If tears were required, he would turn his back on us for a while, walk away, then return a few minutes later clearly weeping. Wow! Even if I stick my finger in my eye, or ram an onion up my nose, I am unable to produce tears like that at will.

But what I think I can do is to harness emotions in order to make my characters’ experiences convincing. I’ve never lived through a war (although the present crisis has some alarming similarities) and I’ve never had to give up a child, or fight for my life, or endure year after year of terror, yet I have written about these ordeals and had many of my characters face them. So how do we convince our readers that our characters’ feelings are genuine?

When I asked Rob how he was able to cry at will, he explained that he thought back to a sad event in his life then dug deep to access those former feelings. Revisiting past griefs isn’t always easy, but it can help our characters to become real. It doesn’t take much imagination to empathise with people going through tough times, particularly at the moment. Being able to recreate the feelings of others in convincing ways helps us access universal and deeply felt experiences – and makes for better writing as a result.